The diagnosis of circulatory organ diseases requires blood pressure measurement and analysis of pulse waves. A pulse wave is a wave which is produce by a movement of a heart which is expressed by plot of pressure versus time. Especially the analysis of aortic waves near the heart is very effective to the diagnosis of the heart diseases. The method for measuring the aortic wave is classified in invasive method and non invasive method. As the invasive method, conventionally blood vessel catheter measurement method has been used. In this method a catheter is inserted into an artery up to a part to be measured so as to directly measure the pulse waves there. On the other hand, as the non invasive one, methods using ultrasonic waves and nuclear magnetic resonance have been developed and are practically used. Arterial sounds obtained under a pressure of a cuff, which are known as Korotkoff sounds, are considered to contain precious information for the diagnosis of the circulatory organ diseases.
But the above mentioned invasive blood vessel catheter measurement method is a bulky method including the insertion of a catheter into an artery. Unpreferably this method physically and mentally burdens patients. On the other hand, the non invasive method less burdens patients but has a problem that pulse waves cannot be measured together with specific blood pressure values. That is, what can be obtained by non invasive method is only forms of pulse waves. Their blood pressure values cannot be concurrently measured. Their blood pressure values have to be measured by other different methods. The diagnoses of heart disease patients essentially require the measurement of pulse waves concurrent with the measurement of their specific blood pressure values. The pulse waves alone obtained by the conventional non invasive method have been insufficient to the diagnoses of heart diseases.
In the above described conventional pulse wave detecting apparatus, one pulse wave is displayed merely separately. To the diagnoses of heart diseases it is one important factor to know transient changes of a pulse wave. But the conventional apparatus have found it difficult to analyze transient changes of a pulse wave.
There is a problem that, based on measurement results of the conventional apparatuses, synthetic diagnoses cannot be made, using pulse waves, blood pressures, and arterial sounds. The synthetic understanding of the three factors, pulse waves, blood pressures and arteiral sounds, are very important to the diagnoses of circulatory organ diseases.
The conventional apparatus cannot visually display a state of the blood circulation throughout the body of a patient. This results in much time and labor.